Coun­cil quizzed on out­sourc­ing of pri­vate rental in­spec­tions

A So­cial Demo­crat coun­cil­lor has chal­lenged the coun­cil to out­line its plans to ‘out­source the in­spec­tions of pri­vate rented ten­an­cies for min­i­mum le­gal stan­dards’.

Cllr Paul Mul­ville (SD) asked the coun­cil to ex­plain its plans and in re­sponse, the lo­cal author­ity said it has ‘statu­tory re­spon­si­bil­i­ties for the inspection and en­force­ment of min­i­mum stan­dards in pri­vate rented dwellings’.

The coun­cil said it car­ried out 704 in­spec­tions of pri­vate rented prop­er­ties dur­ing 2017 but in Fe­bru­ary 2018 the Depart­ment of Hous­ing, Plan­ning and Lo­cal Govern­ment in­formed the coun­cil it would be re­quired to in­spect al­most three times more prop­er­ties, this year.

The lo­cal author­ity said: ‘The as­sis­tance of ex­ter­nal re­sources was re­quired in or­der to meet these tar­gets for 2018 and sub­se­quent years to en­sure greater com­pli­ance and en­force­ment of reg­u­la­tions. The En­vi­ron­men­tal Health Of­fi­cers con­tinue to carry out in­spec­tions, deal with more com­plex cases, is­sue Im­prove­ment No­tices and ini­ti­ate le­gal pro­ceed­ings where ne­c­es­sary.’